Georgia Ann "Tiny" Thompson Broadwick was born to George and Emma Ross of Oxford, North Carolina on April 8, 1893. At birth she weighed only 3 pounds, and grew to only 4 feet 8 inches by adulthood, earning her the nickname “Tiny”.
At 12 Georgia married William Alsie Jacobs of Durham County, a man twice her age. They had one daughter, but were soon divorced. By 15 Georgia was working in a cotton mill, when she happened to see saw Charles Broadwick’s hot air balloon show at a local fair. She quit her job at the cotton mill and joined their act, making parachute jumps from the balloon and billed as “Tiny Broadwick” (it’s unclear if she married Charles Broadwick or became his adopted daughter).
Tiny was the first woman to parachute from an airplane, and helped convince the US Army that parachutes could be used to help pilots safely escape their planes in case of emergency. During this process she invented the ripcord.
